What Big Robot has been working on is the British Countryside Generator, which randomly generates landscapes for players to explore in the game. Programmer Tom Betts designed the generator so that a diverse environment could be created for the game without requiring programmers to individually design each area.

The developers are pretty proud of their accomplishments so far, which is why they’ve decided to release a bunch of screenshots showing off the generator in action. Big Robot creator Jim Rossignol has this to say:

“Remember that none of this stuff is hand-placed. While we’ve pre-made things like the buildings, the naturalistic layout is all mathematically defined. Every map generation will be different, and players can expect to end up playing through quite different worlds on each game.”

He goes on to talk about the game’s “lo-fi” visuals and what that means:

“Lo-fi does not necessarily mean “ugly”, it just means that we are not using super hi-res textures, or high-poly models, or lots of visual shader cleverness, or lots of hi-fidelity art to make our world come to life. Instead, it’s being done with Tom’s clever maths, and our own careful art direction.”

The developers are also excited about the progress being made on players’ ability to use stealth skills as well as the AI. Guard robots now respond to audio sounds, meaning that players can toss a rock to make the guards explore the source of the sound, which is useful for creating diversions.

The release date is still unknown, but in the meantime, check out the preliminary screenshots below. The ones with the gun sticking out first-person style are shots taken by the developers while playing their game.